On the Design of a Privacy-Preserving Communication Scheme for Cloud-Based Digital Twin Environments Using Blockchain

Abstract

Digital twin technology is recently in the spotlight because of its potential applicability in business and industry. In digital twin environments, data generated from physical assets are transmitted to a remote server, which performs simulations through digital twins in a virtual space. Then, the simulation results can be shared with the data owner or other users. However, several challenges exist in the application of digital twin technology in the real world. One of the main challenges involves determining how to share real-time data for the simulation and how to share the simulation data securely. The data generated from physical assets may include sensitive information from data owners, and the leakage of data to an adversary can cause serious privacy problems. Moreover, the sharing of data with other data users should also be considered to maximize the availability of digital twin data. To resolve these issues, we propose a system model for the secure sharing of digital twin data. The proposed system model uses cloud computing for efficient data sharing and blockchain for data verifiability. We also propose communication schemes for the proposed model to guarantee privacy preservation and data security in wireless channels. We analyze the security of the proposed protocol using informal methods and formal methods such as BAN logic and the AVISPA simulation tool. Furthermore, we compare the proposed protocol with related protocols and demonstrate that the proposed scheme is applicable to digital twin environments.

An Effective Privacy-Preserving Blockchain-Assisted Security Protocol for Cloud-Based Digital Twin Environment

“…This attack demonstrates how E tries to impersonate the legitimate server of Son et al scheme [7] by obstructing the response message {R i , L i , T 2 }. If TA gets malicious, then r i can be obtained.…”

“…Several authentication mechanisms [7]- [16] are introduced in the literature however, the majority of them cannot withstand various security assaults. For instance, many two-factor-based protocols cannot facilitate forward secrecy and user anonymity properties; many cannot withstand identity and password-guessing attacks.…”

“…• Firstly, we review and cryptanalysis the scheme proposed by Son et al [7] and identify that the scheme is susceptible to impersonation attacks, password guessing attacks, anonymity, and untraceability attacks. Besides, it does not support mutual authentication and session key agreement.…”

“…Section III is preliminaries which includes the threat model, bio-hashing function, and the security model. Section IV includes the review of Son et al's scheme [7], while Section V discusses the cryptanalysis of Son et al's scheme [7]. Section VI contains the proposed scheme to guarantee secure communication, whereas the security analysis of the proposed work containing informal analysis, BAN Logic and ROR model is given in Section VII.…”

“…This section reviews the scheme proposed by Son et al [7]. The notations used are mentioned in Table 1.…”